[Despite being one of the best selling series in gaming history, FIFA and other football games tend to get the snub from a good portion of video game fans. Seeing that we are right in the middle of the World Cup right now, this is a nice look into what makes people like Salador and myself enjoy playing football games. Forza Azzurri! 🙁 -Anthony]
So, for my first blog, I wanted to talk about some of the games I’ve played so that people can get to know me a little better, and this got me thinking about Football games. I’d like to make this a series where I talk about games that don’t get talked about much, games which meant a lot to me when I played them in the past, or interesting or unique games that I happen to be enjoying today.
In England, we like football. A lot. As kids, my friends, brothers and I would play it all the time. We dragged our poor parents to the arse-end of nowhere to endure watching our terrible youth teams play on rainy weekend mornings. We’d play every lunchtime at school, and then after school. We’d go to the park and play with actual goalposts which felt like an honest-to-God luxury, and we’d force little brothers to play as goalkeeper/ballboy and volley shot after shot at them. We’d throw jumpers down and play anywhere. We’d play against the neighbour’s garages and he’d shout and threaten us.
We’d play variations like “Kerby” or “Boot” (that’s real fun – let in three goals and everyone gets to kick you, but miss or get hit with the ball and you’re in). We’d dribble footballs down the street, practicing keepy-uppies whenever we had to wait to cross the road. We’d become friends through reluctant partnerships playing Wembley doubles, only to betray each other to save ourselves during the next game of Boot. There was always someone with a football and someone else trying to tackle them. Football was everywhere. Football was our lives.
So it made sense that, when we finally stopped playing the real thing, we’d go home, switch on our games consoles and play football video games. Let me explain why I play football games, by going through the ones I’ve owned over the years.
Source: Destructoid Why I play: Football games